Podcast:
Crazy Town 86. Escaping Growthism: Wendigo Economics, Mystery Houses, and Becoming the Bear
By Asher Miller, Rob Dietz, Jason Bradford, originally published by Resilience.org May 1, 2024
"...Grow or die. It’s the governing principle of companies, investment portfolios, national economies, and even philanthropic foundations. Oh, and cancer. Asher, Jason, and Rob lay bare the stats on everything from human population, energy consumption, global GDP, greenhouse gas emissions, and the size of cars and cruise ships, before concluding that the global economy should be named after the Wendigo from Algonquian folklore. They turn to the natural world for examples of self-regulation, along with promising new economic frameworks and on-the-ground models, for how to end Wendigo economics before it ends us.
Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language."
Our new Giving Today newsletter can help guide your charitable decisions – and features rich analysis from experts on all things #philanthropy and nonprofits. Produced in collaboration with the Associated Press and The Chronicle of Philanthropy.
The family of the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg have released a statement denouncing the decision to bestow the Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Leadership Award on a group that includes Elon Musk and Rupert Murdoch. The chair of the award committee, corporate lawyer Brendan Sullivan, said: “The honorees reflect the integrity and achievement that defined Justice Ginsburg’s career and legend,” but Ginsburg's family called the award, "an affront to the memory of our mother and grandmother, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg." The award was previously given only to women, but expanded this year to honor men (Martha Stewart is the only female recipient), with Julie Opperman, chair of the Dwight D. Opperman Foundation (the award's organizer) saying: "Justice Ginsburg fought not only for women but for everyone." Here's more from Mother Jones.
Update: The RBG Award Gala has been canceled after the backlash from Ruth Bader Ginsburg's family. "It is important to note, that the last thing we intended was to offend the family and friends of RBG. Our purpose was only to remember her and to honor her leadership,” Julie Opperman, chair of the foundation that organizes the awards, said. “Over the next several months the Foundation will reconsider its mission and make a judgment about how or whether to proceed in the future,” Opperman’s statement said. Here's more from the Hill.
🇵🇱 [PL] Chciałbym, aby w przypadku NGO, fundacji i stowarzyszeń istniał jakiś proces publicznego audytu i oceny efektywności. Czy coś takiego funkcjonuje? W tym roku przekazuję 1.5% podatku na rzecz Centrum Ochrony Mokradeł (https://bagna.pl/1).
Ostatnio dużo czasu spędziłem na analizie działalności różnych aktywistów i natrafiłem na liczne projekty – niektóre z nich otrzymywały granty w wysokości kilku milionów rocznie – które, mimo ogromnego finansowania, okazywały się być nieskuteczne, edukując o problemach, które nie istnieją. Czasami mam wrażenie, że niektórzy twórcy NGO traktują to jako biznes i nie mają interesu w rozwiązywaniu problemów, które deklarują zwalczać.
Oczywiście nie liczę na jakąkolwiek odpowiedź w fedi na kontrowersyjne i trudne pytania. puszczam to jako przemyślenie i info dla niektórych czytelników.
🇬🇧 [ENG] I believe that NGOs, foundations, and associations should undergo a process of public auditing and effectiveness evaluation. Is there anything like this in place? This year, I am donating 1.5% of my tax to the Wetlands Protection Center (https://bagna.pl/1).
Recently, I've been delving into the activities of various activists and came across numerous projects – some receiving multi-million grants annually – that proved to be ineffective, educating about non-existent issues.
Sometimes, it feels like some NGO creators have turned this into a business and are not genuinely interested in solving the problems they claim to address.
Of course, I don't expect any response on Fedi to controversial and difficult questions. I'm sharing this as a reflection and information for some readers.
After making billions in #TaxDeductible donations to his philanthropy, the owner of #Tesla & SpaceX gave away far less than required in some yrs— & what he did give often supported his #SelfInterests.
Before Mar 2021, #ElonMusk’s charitable foundation never announced any donations to CameronCounty, an impoverished region at the southern tip of TX that is home to his #SpaceX launch site & local ofcls who help regulate it.
“The really striking thing about #Musk is the disjuncture between his outsized public persona, & his very, very minimal #philanthropic presence,” said Benjamin Soskis, who studies #philanthropy at the Urban Institute. Where other billionaires have aimed for a broad #impact on #society, Mr. Soskis said #ElonMusk’s foundation lacks “any direction or any real focus, outside his business ventures.”
I am so excited to announce that I was accepted into the Indiana University Lilly Family School of #Philanthropy
I had the opportunity to participate in a “Pitch Your Passion” event. We had 2 hours to put together a pitch (lucky for me—social justice was our topic) for a chance to win a scholarship.
I was awarded $30,000 [$7,500k/year] and I start in the summer 🎉🎉🎉
Can’t wait for this next stage of my adventure doing what I love best—investing in my #community!
@anderseknert Fun fact: in many jurisdictions, you don't pay capital gains on the income you own on shares until you sell them.
So here's a purely hypothetical example, written with no specific individual in mind. Any resemblance to any real-world examples is pure coincidence.
So imagine you and your business partner start a little software company (with a little help from your mum and dad), and you retain a 50% stake.
Now let's imagine this personal computer thing really goes mainstream. People who don't have computer science PhDs even start to use them.
Your little startup benefits from a combination of good business contacts at IBM (thanks again mum and dad), a knockoff of CP/M that some hobbyist wrote based on a manual, copying some design decisions that Steve Jobs copied from Xerox, and a few questionable business moves that the US Department of Justice will later raise in court.
A couple of decades and an antitrust suit for anti-competitive behaviour later, your little tech company grows to a market cap of $100 billion.
Congratulations! Your 50% stake is now worth $50 billion!
At this point, you haven't had to pay tax on that $50 billion worth of shares, because it's an unrealised capital gain.
It's a huge amount of wealth, but the problem is it's all tied up in one company.
And given your firm's increasing reputation for poor cybersecurity practices and regulatory interest on at least two continents, you decide it's prudent to diversify your investments.
In this purely hypothetical scenario, you really have two choices.
You can sell off your shares. But if you do, you're likely to face a truly astronomical capital gains tax bill. We're talking tens of billions of dollars here.
Or.
You could form a tax exempt charitable foundation that you control, and donate all your shares to it.
Not only do you get out of that capital gains tax bill, but you still get to control the capital you accumulated through your foundation.
An added bonus, if your accountant is good, is that you might also potentially get a massive tax credit that will basically wipe out any income tax you may need to pay in the future.
The only real catch is that you do need to donate a portion of the wealth in your foundation to charitable causes.
But you get to pick which ones.
And not only will the amounts you have to donate be smaller than your capital gains tax bill would have been, but you also get lauded for being a visionary humanitarian.
Oh, and one more perk.
Should you choose to do so, you just make sure your kids take over running your foundation when you're done, and they'll get to control the wealth you accumulated—without any pesky estate taxes!
(They can honestly say they only inherited a few million from you, while they run your multi-billion-dollar foundation to boot!)
Along with libraries, schools and research universities, journalism is an essential part of a democracy’s critical information infrastructure. Democracies in western and northern Europe earmark taxes or dedicated fees not only for legacy TV and radio but also for newspapers and digital media – and they make sure there’s always an arm’s-length relationship between the government and the news outlets so that their journalistic independence is assured. It’s worth noting that U.S. investment in public media is a smaller percentage of GDP than in virtually any other major democracy in the world.
State-level experiments in places such as New Jersey, Washington, D.C., California and Wisconsin suggest that public funding for newspapers and online-only outlets can also work in the U.S. Under these plans, news outlets prioritizing local journalism receive various kinds of public subsidies and grants.
The time has come to dramatically scale up these projects, from millions of dollars to billions, whether through “media vouchers” that allow voters to allocate funds or other ambitious proposals for creating tens of thousands of new journalism jobs across the country.
Is it worth it?
In our view, a crisis that imperils American democracy demands no less than a bold and comprehensive civic response."
Just made 30 new KIVA loans. Please join Team BIML and make some micro-loans to deserving hard workers. This is how capitalists like me scratch their socialist itch. We have loaned $59,195 to date (with about $3500 riding all the time).
Thanks to F-, you can search & download their database. Search by name, state, or sector. DOZENS of sectors--for profit, nonprofit, government, etc. Gives the lobbyist's name or company name & who they've worked for.
Bill Gates is lauded for his philanthropic work, but is the picture we get of him as the “good billionaire” really accurate?
On #TechWontSaveUs, I spoke to @timschwab about the narrative we get about the Gates Foundation and how it uses charity to forward similar capitalist business models as Gates promoted at Microsoft.